


beyond the face of fear/may you kiss

by PJVilar



Series: Love You Back [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Cancer, Developing Relationship, First Time, From Sex to Love, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, M/M, Stiles is high on anesthesia, Surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-29
Updated: 2012-09-29
Packaged: 2017-11-15 06:39:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/524223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PJVilar/pseuds/PJVilar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles has cancer surgery and starts to cope. Sort of. Sequel to "sail through this to that".</p>
            </blockquote>





	beyond the face of fear/may you kiss

  
****The week before his surgery is more than a little bizarre.  
  
Stiles’ dad hews close, and his dad’s always been quite the hewer when he wants to be, but this is an extra step of hewing. He rearranges a lot of his work schedule, goes with Stiles to every mind-numbingly boring appointment. He handles the arrangements with school and lets Stiles yell at him over the lacrosse situation.  
  
He  _cooks_ \--  
  
and freezes the results. Everything he makes is wonderfully, horrifyingly smothered in cheese, probably to make certain it has palatably survived his limited culinary skills. This once, Stiles lets it go.  
  
Scott has formed a ‘temporary alliance’ with Derek’s pack, which Stiles takes to mean “We’re going to try to shelve our bullshit until you’re well.” Peter has left town under his usual shady but probably not dead circumstances, so for now Derek is solidly Alpha, for what that’s worth.  
  
The hospital print-out of his upcoming treatment schedule is too long for the refrigerator, so it’s nailed up in the entry to the kitchen, six months worth of stuff he can’t bring himself to think about yet. Not yet. Surgery first, free the ball from the oppressive tumor, then go from there.  
  
He slept with freaking Derek Hale, and that’s not even in the top five list of things to be completely panicked about. That says it all.  
  
***  
  
“This is not how I pictured this going,” Stiles mutters into Derek’s shoulder. He’s very impressed with his personal lip strength. All this face sucking and they still seem to be attached to his face. Derek taps him under the chin to get his attention and he can feel the edge of claws. It makes him shudder and he looks up.  
  
“How did you picture it?” Derek asks. He runs the pad of his thumb, sans claw, over Stiles’ kiss-sore lower lip. Stiles immediately thinks of wombats and tries not to laugh in Derek’s face. They’re almost naked so that’s probably not cool.  
  
“Dinner, flowers,” Stiles says as Derek sniff and kisses Stiles neck, then his collarbone, working his way down. “Extreme nausea,” he continues. “The back seat of my car.”  
  
Derek looks up from where he’s hovering over Stiles’ boxers. The dude is all eyebrows sometimes, seriously.  
  
“You thought you’d be in love,” he says. Before Stiles can reply, Derek has taken the elastic of Stiles’ boxers between his teeth, drawn back, and snapped them against his stomach. Stiles laughs, quick and choked, and hears his own breath come rushing in over that, when Derek tugs his boxers off in one motion, and buries his face in the crease of his thigh.  
  
Stiles never responds to the comment. He’s a little busy.  
  
***  
  
Surgery is surgery. He has to sign a lot of paperwork, along with his dad, and he’s already at the edge of a tension headache by the time he lies down on the gurney, probably because he hasn’t been allowed to eat today. Stiles eventually stops joking with the various nurses and orderlies about whether he should write “THIS ONE” in Sharpie on his left nut. The joke keeps falling flat.  
  
It’s a Wednesday morning, so everyone is at school except Scott, who, his dad admits wearily, wasn’t about to be kept away. His dad squeezes his shoulder once and says he’ll see him in a few and Stiles lets everything he wants to say hang there, choking him, in his throat. This is just surgery. They’ll get this thing out. This isn’t even the hard part.  
  
It’s not the time for dramatic speeches. He’s gotten better at judging that kind of thing. However tired his dad looks now, it’s nothing compared to what’s coming; chemo and radiation, like a fistfight through molasses. Stiles thinks of his mother right as the anestheseologist leans over, her face covered like a bank robber. His mother, beautiful, laughing, pale and paler still.  
  
Stiles counts backwards from one hundred and makes it to ninety-eight.  
  
***  
  
The tumor was less than a centimeter. His oncologist, Dr. Ayers tells Stiles that by his bedside in recovery at some point, in between the nicest nurses proffering juice and Jello. By the time Stiles manages to say “You promise it’s all gone?” Dr. Ayers is no longer there.  
  
The anesthesia was basically Ketamine. Ketamine is  _awesome_. The fact that he is high as fuck on an animal tranquilizer is  _hilarious_. He should get testicular surgery  _all the time_.  
  
He only just catches the eyeroll that Derek and his father exchange over that comment as Derek settles him in the backseat of the car and, wait,  _Derek_?  
  
Stiles sleeps for twenty four hours.  
  
When he wakes up alone in his room the next evening, his balls are fucking  _sore_.  
  
Holy fuck. He has cancer.


End file.
